Powers,Tim - The Anubis Gates

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BOOK ONE

The Face Under the Fur

PROLOGUE: FEBRUARY 2,1802

"Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we

are...."

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson

FROM BETWEEN TWO trees at the crest of the hill a very old man

watched, with a nostalgic longing he thought he'd lost all

capacity for, as the last group of picnickers packed up their

baskets, mounted their horses, and rode away south—they

moved a little hastily, for it was a good six miles back to Lon-

don, and the red sun was already silhouetting the branches of

the trees along the River Brent, two miles to the west.

When they'd gone the old man turned around to watch the

sun's slow descent. The Boat of Millions of Years, he thought;

the boat of the dying sungod Ra, tacking down the western sky

to the source of the dark river that runs through the under-

world from west to east, through the twelve hours of the night,

at the far eastern end of which the boat will tomorrow reap-

pear, bearing a once again youthful, newly reignited sun.

Or, he thought bitterly, removed from us by a distance the

universe shouldn't even be able to encompass, it's a vast mo-

tionless globe of burning gas, around which this little ball of a

planet rolls like a pellet of dung propelled by a kephera beetle.

4 TIM POWERS

Take your pick, he told himself as he started slowly down the

hill.... But be willing to die for your choice.

He had to walk carefully, for his Japanese clogs were

awkward on the uneven dirt and grass.

Fires were already lit among the tents and wagons, and a

weaving of wild odors whirled up to him on the cool evening

breeze: a sharp, earthy reek from the tethered donkeys, wood

smoke, and the aroma of roasting hedgehog, a dish his people

particularly relished. Faintly, too, he thought he caught a

whiff of stale breath from the crate that had arrived that after-

noon—a musty fetor, as of perverse spices meant to elicit aver-

sion rather than appetite, almost shockingly incongruous

when carried on the clean breezes of Hampstead Heath. As he

approached the cluster of tents he was met by a couple of the

camp dogs; as always, they backed away from him when they

recognized him, and one turned around and loped purpose-

fully to the nearest tent; the other,, with evident reluctance,

escorted Amenophis Fikee into the camp.

Responding to the dog's summons, a dark man in a striped

corduroy coat stepped out of the tent and strode across the

grass toward Fikee. Like the dogs, he halted well short of the

old man. "Good evening, rya," he said. "Will you eat some

dinner? They've got a hotchewitchi on the fire, smells very

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kushto."

"As kushto as hotchewitchi ever does smell, I suppose,"

Fikee muttered absently. "But no, thank you. You all help

yourselves."

"Not I, rya—my Bessie always loved cooked hotchewitchi;

so since she mullered I don't eat it anymore."

Fikee nodded, though he obviously hadn't been listening.

"Very well, Richard." He paused as though hoping for an in-

terruption, but none came. "When the sun is all the way

down, have some of the chals carry that crate down the bank

to the tent of Doctor Romany."

The gypsy scratched his oiled moustache and shifted doubt-

fully. "The crate that the sailor chat brought today?"

"Which crate did you think I meant, Richard? Yes, that

one."

"The chals don't like it, rya. They say there's something in

it mullo dusta beshes, dead many years."

Amenophis Fikee frowned and pulled his cloak closer about

himself. He had left the last rays of sunlight behind him at

the top of the hill, and among these shadows his craggy face

THE ANUBIS GATES 5

seemed to possess no more vitality than a stone or tree trunk.

At last he spoke: "Well, what's in it has seen dusta beshes,

certainly—many many years." He gave the timorous gypsy a

smile that was like a section of hillside falling away to expose

old white stone. "But it's not mullo, I'm ... I hope. Not quite

mullo."

This did nothing to reassure the gypsy, who opened his

mouth to voice another respectful objection; but Fikee had

turned away and was stalking through the clearing toward the

riverbank, his cloak flapping behind him in the wind like the

wing-case of some gigantic insect.

The gypsy sighed and slouched away toward one of the

tents, practicing a limp that would, he hoped, earn him a

dispensation from actually having to help carry the dreadful

crate.

Fikee slowly picked his way along the darkening riverbank

toward Doctor Romany's tent. Except for the hoarse sighing

of the breeze the evening was oddly silent. The gypsies seemed

to realize that something momentous was in the wind tonight,

and were slinking about as silently as their dogs, and even the

lizards had stopped hopping and splashing among the river-

side reeds.

The tent stood in a clearing, at the focus of enough lines and

rigging—slung from every nearby tree—for a good-sized ship.

The angling ropes, assisted by a dozen upright poles, sup-

ported the flapping, bulging, many-layered randomness of

Romany's tent. It looked, thought Fikee, like some huge nun

in a particularly cold-weather habit, crouched beside the river

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in obscure devotion.

Ducking under a couple of ropes, he made his way to the en-

trance and lifted aside the curtain, and stepped through into

the central room, blinking in the brightness that the dozen

lamps cast on the draped carpets which formed the walls, floor

and ceiling.

Doctor Romany stood up from a table, and Fikee felt a

wave of hopeless envy. Why, Fikee asked venomously, hadn't

it been Romanelli who picked that short straw in Cairo last

September? Fikee pulled off his drab cloak and hat and flung

them in a corner. His bald head gleamed like imperfectly

polished ivory in the lamplight.

Romany crossed the room, bobbing grotesquely on his high,

spring-soled shoes, and gripped him by the hand. "It's a great

thing we—you—attempt tonight," he said in a deep muted

S TIM POWERS

voice. "I only wish I could be here with you in person."

Fikee shrugged, a little impatiently. "We are both servants.

My post is England, yours is Turkey. I completely understand

why it is that you can be present tonight only"—he waved

vaguely—"in replica."

"Needless to say," Romany intoned, his voice becoming

deeper as though trying to wring an echo out of the surround-

ing carpets, "if it happens that you die tonight, rest assured

you will be embalmed and entombed with all the proper cere-

monies and prayers."

"If I fail," Fikee answered, "there won't be anybody to

pray to."

"I didn't say fail. It could be that you will succeed in open-

ing the gates, but die in accomplishing it," the unruffled

Romany pointed out. "In such a case you'd want the proper

actions taken."

"Very well," said Fikee with a weary nod. "Good," he

added.

There was a sound of shuffling feet from the entry, and then

an anxious voice. "Rya? Where would you like the crate?

Hurry, I think spirits are coming out of the river to see what's

ink!"

"Not at all unlikely," muttered Doctor Romany as Fikee in-

structed the gypsies to carry the thing inside and set it down on

the floor. This they hastily did, making their exit as quickly as

respectful deportment would permit.

The two very old men stared at the crate in silence for a

time, then Fikee stirred and spoke. "I've instructed my gypsies

that in my ... absence, they are to regard you as their chief."

Romany nodded, then bent over the crate and began

wrenching the top boards away. After tossing aside some

handfuls of crumpled paper he carefully lifted out a little

wooden box tied up with string. He set it on the table. Turning

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back to the crate, he knocked away the rest of the loosened

boards and, grunting with effort, lifted out a paper-wrapped

package which he laid on the floor. It was roughly square,

three feet on each side and six inches thick.

He looked up and said, "The Book," unnecessarily, for

Amenophis Fikee knew what it was.

"If only he could do it, in Cairo," he whispered.

"Heart of the British kingdom," Doctor Romany reminded

him. "Or maybe you imagine he could travel?"

Fikee shook his head, and, crouched beside the table, lifted

THE ANUBIS GATES 7

from under it a glass globe with a slide-away section in its side.

He set it on the table and then began undoing the knots on the

small wooden box. Romany meanwhile had stripped away the

package's paper covering, exposing a black wooden box with

bits of ivory inlaid to form hundreds of Old Kingdom Egyp-

tian hieroglyphics. The latch was leather, and so brittle that it

crumbled to dust when Romany tried to unfasten it. Inside

was a blackened silver box with similar hieroglyphic characters

in relief; and when he'd lifted away the lid of that one a gold

box lay exposed to view, its finely worked surface blazing in

the lamplight.

Fikee had gotten the little wooden box open, and held up a

cork-stoppered glass vial that had been nested in cotton inside.

The vial contained perhaps an ounce of a thick black fluid that

seemed to have sediment in it.

Doctor Romany took a deep breath, then lifted back the lid

of the gold box.

At first Doctor Romany thought all the lamps had been

simultaneously extinguished, but when he glanced at them he

saw that their flames stood as tall as before. But nearly all the

light was gone—it was as though he now viewed the room

through many layers of smoked glass. He pulled his coat

closer about his throat; the warmth had diminished too.

For the first time that night he felt afraid. He forced himself

to look down at the book that lay in the box, the book that

had absorbed the room's light and warmth. Hieroglyphic

figures shone from ancient papyrus—shone not with light but

with an intense blackness that seemed about to suck out his

soul through his eyes. And the meanings of the figures darted

clearly and forcefully into his mind, as they would have done

even to someone who couldn't read the primeval Egyptian

script, for they were written here in the world's youth by the

god Thoth, the father and spirit of language itself. He tore his

gaze fearfully away, for he could feel the words burning marks

on his soul like a baptism.

"The blood," he rasped, and even the capacity of the air to

carry sounds seemed weakened. "Our Master's blood," he

repeated to the dimly seen figure that was Amenophis Fikee.

"Put it into the sphere."

He could just see Fikee thumb aside the hatch in the side of

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the globe and hold the vial to the opening before uncorking it;

the black fluid spilled inside, falling upward, staining the top

8 TIM POWERS

of the glass globe. The moon must be up, Romany realized. A

drop fell up onto Fikee's palm, and must have burned, for he

hissed sharply between his teeth.

"You're ... on your own," croaked Doctor Romany, and

lurched blindly out of the tent into the clearing, where the

evening air felt warm by comparison. He blundered away up

the riverbank, yawing and pitching on his peculiar shoes, and

finally crouched, panting and bobbing, on a slight rise fifty

yards upstream and looked back at the tent.

As his breathing and heartbeat decelerated he thought about

his glimpse of the Book of Thoth, and shuddered. If any

evidence were needed to document the inversion of sorcery

during the last eighteen centuries, that prehistoric book pro-

vided it; for though he'd never actually seen it before,

Romany knew that when the Prince Setnau Kha-em-Uast had,

thousands of years ago, descended into the tomb of Ptah-

nefer-ka at Memphis to recover it, he had found the burial

chamber brightly illuminated by the light that radiated from

the book.

And this spell, he thought unhappily, this tremendous effort

tonight, would have been almost prohibitively dangerous even

in those days, before sorcery became so much more difficult

and personally costly to the sorcerer, and, despite the most

rigid control, unpredictable and twisted in its results. Even in

those days, he thought, none but the bravest and most trans-

cendently competent priest would have dared to employ the

hekau, the words of power, that Fikee was going to speak

tonight: the words which were an invocation and an invitation

to possession addressed to the dog-headed deity Anubis—or

whatever might remain of him now—who, in the time of

Egypt's power, presided over the underworld and the gates

from this world to the other.

Doctor Romany let his gaze break away from the tent and

drift across the river to the heathery landscape that rolled

beyond it up to another rise crested with trees that seemed to

him too tall for their girth, waving their emaciated branches in

the breeze. A northern landscape, he thought, stirred by a

wind that's like flowing gin, sharp and clean and smelling of

berries.

Reacting to the alien qualities of these things, he thought of

the voyage to Cairo, he and Fikee had taken four months

before, summoned by their Master to assist in the new crisis.

Though prevented by a startling disorder from ever leaving

THE ANUBIS GATES 9

his house, their Master had for quite a while been using a

secret army of agents, and an unchartably vast fortune, in an

effort to purge Egypt of the Moslem and Christian taints and,

even more difficult, to throw out the governing Turkish Pasha

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and his foreign mercenaries, restoring Egypt as an indepen-

dent world power. It was the Battle of the Pyramids four years

ago that provided the first real breakthrough for him, though

at the time it had seemed the final defeat—for it had let the

French into Egypt. Romany narrowed his eyes, remembering

the rippling crackle of the French muskets echoing from the

Nile on that hot July afternoon, underscored by the drum-roll

of the charging Mameluke cavalry ... by nightfall the armies

of the Egyptian governors Ibraheem and Murad Bey had been

broken, and the French, under the young general Napoleon,

were in possession.

A wild and agonized howl brought Doctor Romany to his

feet; the sound rebounded among the trees by the river for

several seconds, and when it had died he could hear a gypsy

fearfully muttering protective cantrips. No further sounds

issued from the tent, and Romany let out his breath and

resumed his crouching position. Good luck, Amenophis, he

thought—I'd say "may the gods be with you," but that's what

you're deciding right now. He shook his head uneasily.

When the French came into power it had seemed like the

end of any hope of restoring the old order, and their Master

had, by hard-wrought sorcerous manipulation of wind and

tides, lent subtle aid to the British admiral Nelson when he

destroyed the French fleet less than two weeks later. But then

the French occupation turned to their Master's advantage; the

French curtailed the arrogant power of the Mameluke Beys,

and in 1800 drove out the Turkish mercenaries who'd been

strangling the country. And the general who took command of

Cairo when Napoleon returned to France, Kleber, didn't in-

terfere with their Master's political intrigues and his efforts to

lure the Moslem and Coptic population back into the old pan-

theist worship of Osiris, Isis, Horus and Ra. It looked, in fact,

as though the French occupation would do for Egypt what

Jenner's cowpox was evidently doing now for human bodies:

substituting a manageable infection, which could be easily

eliminated after a while, for a deadly one that would relent

only upon the death of the host.

Then, of course, it began to go wrong. Some lunatic from

Aleppo stabbed Kleber to death in a Cairo street, and in the

10 TIM POWERS

ensuing months of confusion the British took up the slack; by

September of 1801 Kleber's inept successor had capitulated to

the British in Cairo and Alexandria. The British were in, and a

single week saw the arrest of a dozen of the Master's agents.

The new British governor even found reason to close the

temples to the old gods that the Master had had erected out-

side the city.

In desperation their Master sent for his two oldest and most

powerful lieutenants, Amenophis Fikee from England and

Doctor Monboddo Romanelli from Turkey, and unveiled to

them the plan that, though fantastic to a degree that suggested

senility in the ancient man, was, he insisted, the only way to

scorch England from the world picture and restore Egypt's

eons-lost ascendancy.

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They had met him in the huge chamber in which he lived,

alone except for his ushabtis, four life-size wax statues of

men. From his peculiar ceiling perch he had begun by pointing

out that Christianity, the harsh sun that had steamed the life-

juices out of the now all but dry husk of sorcery, was at pres-

ent veiled by clouds of doubt arising from the writings of

people like Voltaire and Diderot and Godwin.

Romanelli, as impatient with the antique magician's ex-

tended metaphors as he was with most things, broke in to ask

bluntly how all this might aid in evicting the British from

Egypt.

"There is a magical procedure—" the Master began.

"Magic!" Romanelli had interrupted, as scornfully as he

dared. "These days we'd get headaches and double vision—

not to mention losing about five pounds—if we tried to charm

a pack of street dogs out of our way; and even then as likely as

not it'd go awry and they'd all simply drop dead where they

stood. It's easier to shout and wave a stick at them. I'm sure

you haven't forgotten how you suffered after playing with the

weather at the Bay of Aboukeer three years ago. Your eyes

withered up like dates left too long in the sun, and your

legs—!"

"As you say, I haven't forgotten," said the Master coldly,

turning those partially recovered eyes on Romanelli, who in-

voluntarily shivered, as always, before the almost imbecilic

hatred that burned in them. "As it happens, although I'll be

present by proxy, one of you must perform this spell, for it has

to be sited very near the heart of the British Empire, which

THE ANUBIS GATES 11

would be the city of London, and my condition forbids travel.

Though I'll provide you with all the strongest remaining wards

and protective amulets, the working of it will, as you suggest,

consume quite a bit of the sorcerer. You will draw straws from

the cloth on that table, and the man with the short straw will

be the one to do it."

Fikee and Romanelli stared at the two stubs of straw pro-

truding from beneath a scarf, then at each other.

"What is the spell?" queried Fikee.

"You know our gods are gone. They reside now in the

Tuaut, the underworld, the gates of which have been held shut

for eighteen centuries by some pressure I do not understand

but which I am sure is linked with Christianity. Anubis is the

god of that world and the gates, but has no longer any form in

which to appear here." His couch shifted a little, and the

Master closed his eyes for a moment in pain. "There is a

spell," he rasped finally, "in the Book of Thoth, which is an

invocation to Anubis to take possession of the sorcerer. This

will allow the god to take physical form—yours. And as you

are speaking that spell you will simultaneously be writing

another, a magic I myself have composed that is calculated to

open new gates between the two worlds—gates that shall

pierce not only the wall of death but also the wall of time, for

if it succeeds they will open out from the Tuaut of forty-three

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centuries ago, when the gods—and I—were in our prime."

There was a silence long enough for the Master's couch to

move another painful couple of inches. At last Fikee spoke.

"And what will happen then?"

"Then," said the Master in a whisper that echoed round the

spherical chamber, "the gods of Egypt will burst out in

modern England. The living Osiris and the Ra of the morning

sky will dash the Christian churches to rubble, Horus and

Khonsu will disperse all current wars by their own tran-

scendent force, and the monsters Set and Sebek will devour all

who resist! Egypt will be restored to supremacy and the world

will be made clean and new again."

And what role could you, or we, thought Romanelli bit-

terly, play in a clean new world?

"Is," Fikee said hesitantly, "is it still possible, you're cer-

tain? After all, the world already was young that way once,

and an old man can't be made into a boy again any more than

wine can go back to grape juice." The Master was getting very

12

TIM POWERS

THE ANUBIS GATES

13

angry, but he pressed on desperately, "Would it be completely

out of the question to ... adapt to the new ways and new

gods? What if we're clinging to a sinking ship?"

The Master had gone into a fit of rage, drooling and gab-

bling helplessly, and so one of the wax ushabti statues

twitched and began working its jaws. "Adapt?" shouted the

Master's voice out of the wax throat. "You want to get bap-

tized? Do you know what a Christian baptism would do to

you? Negate you—unmake you—salt on a snail, moth in a

fire!" The furious speaking was causing the wax lips to crack.

"A sinking ship? You stinking, fearful body-vermin of a

diseased whore! What if it should sink, is sinking, has sunk!

We'll ride it down. I'd rather be at the helm of this sunken

ship than in the ... cattle pen! ... of that new one! Shall

I—ack . . . ack . . . kha—" The tongue and lips of the wax

statue broke off and were spat out by the still driving breath.

For several moments Master and ushabti gibbered together,

then the Master regained control of himself and the statue fell

silent. "Shall I," asked the Master, "release you, Ameno-

phis?"

Romanelli remembered, with unwelcome clarity, once see-

ing another of the Master's very old servants suddenly made

independent of the Master's magical bonds; the man had,

within the space of a few minutes, withered and broken down

and dried and split apart and finally shaken himself to dust;

but worse than the fact of death and dissolution was his

memory that the man had retained consciousness through the

entire process. . . . And it had seemed to be an agony worse

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than burning.

The silence in the chamber lengthened, unbroken except for

the faint slapping sound of the ushabti's tongue on the floor

tiles. "No," said Fikee at last. "No."

"Then you are one of my crew, and will obey." The Master

waved one of his crippled, driftwood arms. "Choose a

straw."

Fikee looked at Romanelli, who just bowed and waved after

you toward the table. Fikee stepped over to it and drew out

one of the straws. It was, of course, the short one.

The Master sent them to the ruins of Memphis to copy from

a hidden stone the, hieroglyphic characters that were his real

name, and here too a shock awaited them, for they had seen

the Master's name stone once before, many centuries ago, and

the characters carved on it were two symbols like a fire in a

dish followed by an owl and the looped cross: Tchatcha-em-

Ankh, it spelled, Strengths in Life; but now different

characters were incised in the ancient stone—now there were

three umbrella shapes, a small bird, an owl, a foot, the bird

again and a fish over a slug. Khaibitu-em-Betu-Tuf, he read,

and mentally translated it: Shadows of Abomination.

Despite the baking desert heat the pit of his stomach went

cold, but he remembered a thing that had whimpered and

rolled about as it fell apart into dust, and so he only pursed his

lips as he obediently copied down the name.

Upon their return to Cairo the Master delayed Romanelli's

return to Turkey long enough to fashion a duplicate of him

out of the magical fluid paut. The animated duplicate, or ka,

was ostensibly made to travel to England with Fikee and assist

him in performing the Anubis summoning, but all three knew

that its main task would be to serve as a guard over Fikee and

prevent any dereliction of duty. Since the odd pair would be

living with Fikee's tribe of gypsies until the arrival of the Book

and the vial of their Master's blood, Fikee dubbed the ka Doc-

tor Romany, after the word the gypsies used for their language

and culture.

Another howl broke from the tent downstream, this one

sounding more like pieces of metal being violined against each

other than an issue from any organic throat. The sound rose in

volume and pitch, drawing the air as taut as a bowstring, and

for a moment, during which Romany numbly noted that the

river was holding still like a pane of rippled glass, the ringing,

grating peak note held, filling the dark countryside. Then

something seemed to break, as if a vast bubble over them had

popped, silently but palpably. The ghastly howl broke too,

and as the shattered bits of sound tumbled away in a mad,

despairing sobbing, Romany could feel the air spring back to

its usual pressure; and as though the molecules of the black

fabric had all abruptly relaxed even their usual clench, the tent

burst into bright yellow flame.

Romany sprinted down the bank, picking his footing with

ease in the glare of the fire, and with scorching fingers flicked

the burning entry curtain aside, and bounded into the smoky

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interior. Fikee was a huddled, sobbing bulk in the corner.

Romany slammed the Book of Thoth shut and put it in the

gold box, tucked that under his arm and stumbled outside

again.

14 TIM POWERS

Just as he got away from the intense heat, he heard a bark-

ing, whimpering sound behind him, and turned. Fikee had

crawled out of the tent and was rolling on the ground, presum-

ably to put out his smoldering clothes.

"Amenophis!" Romany called over the roaring of the fire.

Fikee stood up and turned on Romany a glance devoid of

recognition, then threw his head back and howled like a jackal

at the moon.

Instantly Romany reached into his coat with both hands and

drew out two flintlock pistols. He aimed one and fired it, and

Fikee folded up in midair and sat down hard several feet

behind where he'd been standing; but a moment later he had

rolled back up on his hands and knees and was scuttling away

into the darkness, now on two legs, now on all fours.

Romany aimed the other pistol as well as he could and fired

again, but the loping shape didn't seem to falter and soon he

lost sight of it. "Damn," he whispered. "Die out there,

Amenophis. You do owe us that."

He looked up at the sky—there was no sign of any gods

breaking through; he stared toward the west long enough to

satisfy himself that the sun wasn't going to reappear. He

shook his head in profound weariness.

Like most modern magics, he thought bitterly, while it

probably did something, it didn't accomplish what it was sup-

posed to.

Finally he tucked the pistols away, picked up the Book and

bobbed slowly back to the gypsy camp. Even the dogs had

hidden, and Romany met no one as he made his way to Fikee's

tent. Once inside, he put down the gold box, lit a lamp, and

then far into the night, with pendulum, level, a telescope and a

tuning fork and reams of complicated calculations geometrical

and alchemical, worked at determining to what extent, if any,

the spell had succeeded.

CHAPTER 1

"In this flowing stream, then, on which there is

no abiding, what is there of the things which

hurry by on which a man would set a high price?

It would be just as if a man should fall in love

with one of the sparrows which fly by, but it has

already passed out of sight."

—Marcus Aurelius

WHEN THE DRIVER swung the BMW in to the curb, braked to a

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Powers, Tim - The Anubis Gates

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